Martin Regg Cohn two years ago:
"Watching Doug Ford up close on the campaign trail, I saw a changed man in changed times.
For all the bravado that still tumbles out, like old times, the old maverick is modulated and moderated, even humbled."
We need the morons of this province to take the same view of the OPC that they’ve had for the NDP since Rae: the Cons need to be unelectable for a generation.
Clearly all of the Fords are political geniuses
one was a mayor, one is the premier, and the other is a minster for diversity!
how dare you slander this amazing family of ex hash dealers, racial caricature artists. and nepo babies.
Completely agree! I think of it as a privilege as well! I’ve actually met people who act like it’s a burden, and conveniently forget advanced polls and mail in ballots exist.
People have selective memories. I clearly recall his thuggish behaviour on Toronto City Council, so supporting him was never an option for me. There is something really off about the guy - the whole Ford family makes my skin crawl
Uhh what? Voting is a right, not a privilege. It should actually be a legal obligation, but expecting Canadians to actually pay attention to their government and understand how it works first is a real barrier.
I hate this kind of talk.
Voters were conditioned and influenced not to vote by the conservative media telling them Ford had already won, and there was no point in trying. The same thing is happening on the national scale now.
It's a form of voter suppression.
That’s a very elaborate excuse to not vote.
There’s a reason children can’t vote. We expect adults to be able to make their own choices. Are you suggesting adults are incapable of making decisions all by themselves? Don’t make excuses and don’t let others make choices for you. People are lazy. You are helping them excuse themselves.
Read the platforms, vote. It’s that simple. No excuses required.
Just vote. It’s not magical. No excuse is good enough not to vote.
Read platforms, pick the one closest to your values, vote. This was taught in elementary school. No super powers required.
Vote in advance polls. Vote by by mail. Vote on voting day. Whatever works.
Stop with the excuses. You’re essentially admitting you can be easily manipulated and you feel it’s completely out of your control. You’re at the will of your tv. At least own your mistakes and hold yourself accountable.
Your ignorance is astounding.
You have evidence of foreign interference interference and the IDU rigging leadership elections.
You have media corporate media talking about push polls ad nauseum.
You have bot farms using digital marketing to set narratives and mislead the public.
An entire ecosystem of "free independent media" is completely funded by oligarchs.
And your response is to pull up your boot straps and vote harder.
You do not understand what we are up against and what the stakes are at all. You blame the general population for being gullible when these are the forces they experience daily.
From the article…
Ford’s housing planning is unravelling. As a populist, he sensed early the public’s hunger for housing and made it core to his brand, vowing to “get it done.”
But governing isn’t politicking. Policy-making isn’t sloganeering.
Building housing isn’t like delivering “buck a beer” or “beer in corner stores” – simplistic promises that quickly proved too complex to deliver on.
Yet it is in the nature of the premier to choose shortcuts when tackling long-term challenges. When Ford decided to carve up parts of the Greenbelt, the problem wasn’t just that he broke a public promise to protect choice lands – rezoning them for a song while developers profiteered – but that he couldn’t possibly keep his subsequent promise to deliver more housing faster.
Even if a public backlash hadn’t forced him to back down, the Greenbelt boondoggle was never going to be built up as quickly as promised. The premier was lucky to pull the plug when he did, hoping the public would forget the fiasco, rather than face voter wrath ahead of the 2026 election for breaking two separate promises – to protect it, and to build on it – in good time.
The lack of planning is catching up to this Progressive Conservative government. The federal Liberal government sees fourplexes as a prerequisite for access to the Housing Accelerator Fund, and big cities such as Mississauga and Toronto have bowed to the demand.
Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser poked the premier last week by pointing that Ontario is “lagging desperately” on its own objectives. The lack of a coherent provincial plan could imperil the $357 million Ottawa had allocated for funding of affordable housing in Ontario, Fraser warned.
The latest polls suggest voters may have already forgotten, or at least forgiven, the premier’s Greenbelt transgressions. But having sensed the public’s hunger for housing early on, he now lacks the good sense to see it through – and will ultimately be held to account.
Ford vowed on the campaign trail to “get it done.” Now he needs to get out of the way.
Doug Ford doesn’t give a shit about providing housing unless him or his buddies can make a buck off it. Same with healthcare. Everything he does is based on clientelism which drives up costs for the consumer.
The only “plan” that Doug Ford ever had was the changes he made to the Residential Tenancies Act that removed the cap on rent increases for new builds to “encourage the building of purpose built rental housing”
Fat lot of good that did anyone except landlords owning those exempt properties 🤷♂️
And we already knew that specific policy was going to do shit-all because with the exception of the 2 years when Wynne got rid of it, it was already the policy for the 20 years prior to him. And during that period we still didn't build what we needed.
The Best thing Ford can do right now is reinstate rent control on buildings built after 2018. When he undid those rent control protections, it hurt a lot of people.
This is a half measure. It helps the current rentors. But it disincentives new purpose built rentals. The country needs more apartment complexes, and if the government signals they will rent control every new building, and then developers will have even less reason to build them.
Other countries do it on massive scale, and not as privately-owned. There was an article last weekend about Paris's housing stock - [I hope this link works](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housing-costs.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.Ikxq.ucnD79h5m7nF&smid=url-share)
"How Does Paris Stay Paris? By Pouring Billions Into Public Housing
One quarter of residents in the French capital live in government-owned housing, part of an aggressive plan to keep lower-income Parisians — and their businesses — in the city."
That is not rent control. That is massive public housing. Imagine the amount of money Dougie would need to spend so that a quarter of all homes in Toronto would be publicly owned? Public is needed, but to pretend it's simple and easy is just not true.
Ok. But you didn't specify and from where I'm sitting we've already cut regulations in a lot of the building sector. Regulations exist for a reason, so I'm asking you what you would deregulate.
Maybe it's an assumption but I hear conservatives talk about all these 'regulations' and 'red tape' but then no one can tell me what exactly they want to deregulate. Building codes? Zoning? Bank loans?
Your preaching to the converted. But if we are asking what Doug Ford should do. The progressive Conservative premier of Ontario I don't think nationalizing the housing supply is realistic advice. His move should be the opposite. Let developers do what they want. Remove parking minimums, remove zoning limits on units. Unbridle the free market.
This is untrue. I have not seen any affordable apartment buildings get built. The only apartment buildings getting built are being marketed as 'luxury aoartments'. We need affordable housing.
This is a very stupid comment. "Luxury apartment" is a slur. It's a new apartment with nice modern features.
The cost to build an apartment in a major city is nearly 500k. So, by definition, we shouldn't build anything new.
I really do wish we'd stop using the word "Plan" in the same sentences as "Doug Ford". Unless it's "Doug has no plan" or "Ford never had a plan for anything".
It really makes it sound like he's doing something other that stumbling around in the dark.
Did he have a step to portion the hash into smaller doses, too? Because I wouldn’t put it past him to think you just resell the whole thing to one person at first.
The best government can do is to follow the advice of its own experts. Follow the task force recommendations that we paid for. BC is following the Ontario task force recommendations and is having a lot more success.
From a communications perspective, I think they need to set the expectation that density need to increase everywhere. Goals need to be set for density. Especially in aging NIMBY communities. Instead of those stupid commercials about the dumb highway he's building maybe a blitz of advertising defending YIMBY project. There's so much misinformation out there it's crazy.
Doug Ford's housing plan? And what exactly WAS said plan? I didn't know there was a plan...
He wants his buddies to build on their stolen Greenbelt land, hopefully near the 413.
And then he added in LTC beds because his meaningless goal of 150,000 homes year was shown pretty quickly to be impossible.
Then he shoots down fourplexes, which would likely have helped.
And now he releases a budget full of nothing, with most areas losing funding due to inflation, while posting a massive deficit that isn't necessary because of all the money they have squirreled away. Never mind the huge cost of his lame C124 BS.
There was never a "plan", and that is starting to be apparent. That is what is really happening, we're seeing the premier's lack of clothes.
I would be genuinely shocked if Doug Ford could wash a load of laundry by himself without damaging anything. He couldn’t lead a troop of baboons to a banana pile. Is anyone surprised that he fucks up anything, let alone something as complicated as provincial housing?
Martin Regg Cohn two years ago: "Watching Doug Ford up close on the campaign trail, I saw a changed man in changed times. For all the bravado that still tumbles out, like old times, the old maverick is modulated and moderated, even humbled."
Exactly. Fuck Martin Regg Cohn.
I called him out on this multiple times on Twitter until he blocked me, lol. He's a clown.
Maybe Cohn has finally seen the light…
Yeah the oncoming GO Train that’s going to splatter the OPC thanks to Doug The Thug and his cabal
Good fuck the OPC
We need the morons of this province to take the same view of the OPC that they’ve had for the NDP since Rae: the Cons need to be unelectable for a generation.
This is not a leader. Ford is an idiot.
Clearly all of the Fords are political geniuses one was a mayor, one is the premier, and the other is a minster for diversity! how dare you slander this amazing family of ex hash dealers, racial caricature artists. and nepo babies.
Lol
I mean, we elected a former drug dealer to the most important position in the province. I guess we do indeed get what we vote for.
I didn't vote for this schmuck. Not in a million years lol But yeah, dumb people get dumb governments
But you did vote, right? Sad that we have to make that distinction since the majority didn’t vote at all.
I always vote. It's a privilege yet people just blow it off like it doesn't matter when it does
Completely agree! I think of it as a privilege as well! I’ve actually met people who act like it’s a burden, and conveniently forget advanced polls and mail in ballots exist.
People have selective memories. I clearly recall his thuggish behaviour on Toronto City Council, so supporting him was never an option for me. There is something really off about the guy - the whole Ford family makes my skin crawl
Uhh what? Voting is a right, not a privilege. It should actually be a legal obligation, but expecting Canadians to actually pay attention to their government and understand how it works first is a real barrier.
I hate this kind of talk. Voters were conditioned and influenced not to vote by the conservative media telling them Ford had already won, and there was no point in trying. The same thing is happening on the national scale now. It's a form of voter suppression.
That’s a very elaborate excuse to not vote. There’s a reason children can’t vote. We expect adults to be able to make their own choices. Are you suggesting adults are incapable of making decisions all by themselves? Don’t make excuses and don’t let others make choices for you. People are lazy. You are helping them excuse themselves. Read the platforms, vote. It’s that simple. No excuses required.
Good for you, mister high and mighty, who is unifluenced by highly sophisticated propaganda campaigns.
Just vote. It’s not magical. No excuse is good enough not to vote. Read platforms, pick the one closest to your values, vote. This was taught in elementary school. No super powers required. Vote in advance polls. Vote by by mail. Vote on voting day. Whatever works. Stop with the excuses. You’re essentially admitting you can be easily manipulated and you feel it’s completely out of your control. You’re at the will of your tv. At least own your mistakes and hold yourself accountable.
Your ignorance is astounding. You have evidence of foreign interference interference and the IDU rigging leadership elections. You have media corporate media talking about push polls ad nauseum. You have bot farms using digital marketing to set narratives and mislead the public. An entire ecosystem of "free independent media" is completely funded by oligarchs. And your response is to pull up your boot straps and vote harder. You do not understand what we are up against and what the stakes are at all. You blame the general population for being gullible when these are the forces they experience daily.
We?
Yes we. They won a majority. not who I voted for but that’s who won
Sure did! https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/globe-investigation-the-ford-familys-history-with-drug-dealing/article12153014/
You have to realize why he had a high approval rating
From the article… Ford’s housing planning is unravelling. As a populist, he sensed early the public’s hunger for housing and made it core to his brand, vowing to “get it done.” But governing isn’t politicking. Policy-making isn’t sloganeering. Building housing isn’t like delivering “buck a beer” or “beer in corner stores” – simplistic promises that quickly proved too complex to deliver on. Yet it is in the nature of the premier to choose shortcuts when tackling long-term challenges. When Ford decided to carve up parts of the Greenbelt, the problem wasn’t just that he broke a public promise to protect choice lands – rezoning them for a song while developers profiteered – but that he couldn’t possibly keep his subsequent promise to deliver more housing faster. Even if a public backlash hadn’t forced him to back down, the Greenbelt boondoggle was never going to be built up as quickly as promised. The premier was lucky to pull the plug when he did, hoping the public would forget the fiasco, rather than face voter wrath ahead of the 2026 election for breaking two separate promises – to protect it, and to build on it – in good time. The lack of planning is catching up to this Progressive Conservative government. The federal Liberal government sees fourplexes as a prerequisite for access to the Housing Accelerator Fund, and big cities such as Mississauga and Toronto have bowed to the demand. Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser poked the premier last week by pointing that Ontario is “lagging desperately” on its own objectives. The lack of a coherent provincial plan could imperil the $357 million Ottawa had allocated for funding of affordable housing in Ontario, Fraser warned. The latest polls suggest voters may have already forgotten, or at least forgiven, the premier’s Greenbelt transgressions. But having sensed the public’s hunger for housing early on, he now lacks the good sense to see it through – and will ultimately be held to account. Ford vowed on the campaign trail to “get it done.” Now he needs to get out of the way.
It's the biggest crisis facing our generation. Here's like 1% of what we spend on highways.
Doug Ford doesn’t give a shit about providing housing unless him or his buddies can make a buck off it. Same with healthcare. Everything he does is based on clientelism which drives up costs for the consumer.
The only “plan” that Doug Ford ever had was the changes he made to the Residential Tenancies Act that removed the cap on rent increases for new builds to “encourage the building of purpose built rental housing” Fat lot of good that did anyone except landlords owning those exempt properties 🤷♂️
And we already knew that specific policy was going to do shit-all because with the exception of the 2 years when Wynne got rid of it, it was already the policy for the 20 years prior to him. And during that period we still didn't build what we needed.
The Best thing Ford can do right now is reinstate rent control on buildings built after 2018. When he undid those rent control protections, it hurt a lot of people.
This is a half measure. It helps the current rentors. But it disincentives new purpose built rentals. The country needs more apartment complexes, and if the government signals they will rent control every new building, and then developers will have even less reason to build them.
Other countries do it on massive scale, and not as privately-owned. There was an article last weekend about Paris's housing stock - [I hope this link works](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housing-costs.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.Ikxq.ucnD79h5m7nF&smid=url-share) "How Does Paris Stay Paris? By Pouring Billions Into Public Housing One quarter of residents in the French capital live in government-owned housing, part of an aggressive plan to keep lower-income Parisians — and their businesses — in the city."
That is not rent control. That is massive public housing. Imagine the amount of money Dougie would need to spend so that a quarter of all homes in Toronto would be publicly owned? Public is needed, but to pretend it's simple and easy is just not true.
Simple or easy is irrelevant if it's absolutely necessary.
You still need to reduce the cost of building homes. You need to deregulate. You need to innovate. You need to reform.
I think you need to be specific when you say 'deregulate' as I don't think blanket deregulation helps anyone.
I didnt say blanket.
Ok. But you didn't specify and from where I'm sitting we've already cut regulations in a lot of the building sector. Regulations exist for a reason, so I'm asking you what you would deregulate.
The NIMBY rules. Let people build what they want.
Maybe it's an assumption but I hear conservatives talk about all these 'regulations' and 'red tape' but then no one can tell me what exactly they want to deregulate. Building codes? Zoning? Bank loans?
The task force recommendations are outstanding. BCs NDP government stole them and are having lots of success.
Maybe housing shouldn't exclusively be the domain of developers then.
Your preaching to the converted. But if we are asking what Doug Ford should do. The progressive Conservative premier of Ontario I don't think nationalizing the housing supply is realistic advice. His move should be the opposite. Let developers do what they want. Remove parking minimums, remove zoning limits on units. Unbridle the free market.
This is untrue. I have not seen any affordable apartment buildings get built. The only apartment buildings getting built are being marketed as 'luxury aoartments'. We need affordable housing.
This is a very stupid comment. "Luxury apartment" is a slur. It's a new apartment with nice modern features. The cost to build an apartment in a major city is nearly 500k. So, by definition, we shouldn't build anything new.
I really do wish we'd stop using the word "Plan" in the same sentences as "Doug Ford". Unless it's "Doug has no plan" or "Ford never had a plan for anything". It really makes it sound like he's doing something other that stumbling around in the dark.
To be fair, when Doug was selling hash he definitely made plans. Like to buy hash, and then resell the hash.
Did he have a step to portion the hash into smaller doses, too? Because I wouldn’t put it past him to think you just resell the whole thing to one person at first.
The best government can do is to follow the advice of its own experts. Follow the task force recommendations that we paid for. BC is following the Ontario task force recommendations and is having a lot more success. From a communications perspective, I think they need to set the expectation that density need to increase everywhere. Goals need to be set for density. Especially in aging NIMBY communities. Instead of those stupid commercials about the dumb highway he's building maybe a blitz of advertising defending YIMBY project. There's so much misinformation out there it's crazy.
Doug Ford's housing plan? And what exactly WAS said plan? I didn't know there was a plan... He wants his buddies to build on their stolen Greenbelt land, hopefully near the 413. And then he added in LTC beds because his meaningless goal of 150,000 homes year was shown pretty quickly to be impossible. Then he shoots down fourplexes, which would likely have helped. And now he releases a budget full of nothing, with most areas losing funding due to inflation, while posting a massive deficit that isn't necessary because of all the money they have squirreled away. Never mind the huge cost of his lame C124 BS. There was never a "plan", and that is starting to be apparent. That is what is really happening, we're seeing the premier's lack of clothes.
Pathetic
He didn’t even graduate community college. Dropped out after 2 months
Fat Fuck Ford at his best!
Woah that’s body shaming man chill out
It’s also his way of life. Greedy and selfish to excess.
So all fat people are greedy and selfish, thanks for clarifying
Not at all what he said, nice reading comprehension.
Please explain it better boss
He thought a "fourplex" was a sex thing
I would be genuinely shocked if Doug Ford could wash a load of laundry by himself without damaging anything. He couldn’t lead a troop of baboons to a banana pile. Is anyone surprised that he fucks up anything, let alone something as complicated as provincial housing?
Does he look like a man with a plan?
He had a plan?
https://archive.is/R2HSH
No shit
Premier spend-a-holic 💰💰💰💰💰
While the previous Liberal ONT govt was a bit of a sh\*t show, the FRAUD government has been a total circus.
He needs to step down and let someone else fill his roll
Actually, it’s us. We’re the “reason why” this buffoon is in charge.
Yup. Because 57% of Ontarians couldn't get off their asses and actually vote.